US Market
Food distributor Rainforest Seafoods Limited, which also trades as Rainforest Caribbean, and is known for its wide array of frozen seafood, has expanded its product portfolio, creating a new revenue stream with the introduction of Rainforest-branded canned products. With this move, the company has clearly staked out its claim to a share of the highly lucrative global canned food market that carried an estimated value of almost US$103 billion, or nearly $16 trillion in 2021, and is projected to grow to a whopping US$130 billion, or more than $20 trillion, over the next five years. This adds to Rainforest’s other business lines that include burger meats; frozen potato fries and wedges; packaged fruits and vegetables; imported Irish cheese; the Fresh by Rainforest line of upmarket seafood delicacies such as Scottish salmon, oysters, scallops and mussels; and the 40-acre Rainforest Farm in Martha Brae, Trelawny, that grows and markets a variety of crops, including tubers and fruits. Rainforest also operates Fish Pot Fry Fish Shop, a casual dining restaurant and food truck in Kingston; and the Seafood Market outlet at Freeport in Montego Bay.
The 27-year-old company is said to have spent the past six months testing the market for reactions to what are said to be its fast-moving canned mackerel, Vienna sausage and corned beef products, before it moves ahead with a full-scale roll-out later this year that will determine whether other items are added to the canned line.
The company declined to disclose the investment spend to get the canned products, which are processed and packed overseas, to the Jamaican market. United States export trade facilitation organisations Food Export Association of the Mid-West and Food Export USA-North East have described Jamaica as the third-largest packaged food market in the Caribbean, excluding Puerto Rico. The local retail food market was forecast to have reached a value of US$857 million, or $132 billion, by 2021.
Rainforest’s diversification into canned products comes four years after the company announced its intention to expand its manufacturing division into food processing to create value-added products. The Brian Jardin-led company has processing plants in Montego Bay and Kingston. Its cold storage facilities that are said to boast a capacity for storing up to 10 million pounds of perishables are also located in both cities, from which Rainforest does a brisk export business to some 30 countries. The canned foods are only for the local market for now, company officials have said, not ruling out the possibility of adding them to its export business in the future.
Canned foods were not publicly stated to have been in the works when, some five years ago, Rainforest shelled out US$10 million, or more than $1.5 billion, on the Montego Bay processing facility that Jardin at the time said would be used to produce a range of packaged, ready-to-eat foods, including cooked crabs, lobsters, conch skewers with local vegetables, seafood soups, seafood burgers, pickled fish and fish nuggets, among other value-added products. Some of the packaged foods are still in the works and yet to hit the market.